But is the acceptance of Christ as my Saviour ALL that is necessary to save me for all eternity? Yes I admit the very simplicity of it seems too make it hard to grasp. But if I owe $500 and have nothing with which to pay, and a friend pays the debt for me and gives me the receipt, I don't worry about it any more. I can look my creditor straight in the face, for I hold his signed receipt. As Jesus Christ gave His life in place of mine, He said: "It is finished," meaning that the work of atonement was completed, and God gave me His receipt; in other words, the assurance that He was satisfied with Christ's finished work in that He (God) raised Christ from the dead on the third day.

    "But I can't see it," said a certain cabinet-maker, as a friend tried to explain this to him. At last an inspiration came to his friend, who, lifting a plane, made as though he would plane the top of a beautifully French-polished table that stood near, "Stop!" cried the cabinetmaker; "don't you see that's finished? You'll simply ruin it if you use that plane on it." "Why," replied his friend, "that's just what I have been trying to show you about Christ's work of redemption. It was finished when He gave His life for you, and if you try to add to that finished work you can only spoil it. Just accept it as it stands - His life for yours, and you go free." Like a flash he saw it, and received Jesus Christ as his Saviour.

    But, says someone, here is a problem that puzzles me. I know a polished cultured gentleman who is not a Christian and states so quite definitely and I know a rather crude uncultured man who is a Christian and who shows his genuine belief in many ways. Do you mean to tell me God prefers the uncultured man simply because he has accepted and acknowledged Christ as his Saviour? This question arises from a confusion of ideas. A Christian is not different in degree from a non-Christian, he is different in KIND, just as the difference between a diamond and a cabbage is not one of degree, but of kind. The one is polished, the other is crude, but the one is dead while the other is alive, therefore the one has what the other has not in any degree whatever, LIFE and such is the difference God sees between a Christian and a non-Christian. Here is one of many such statements He makes in His Word. 1 John 5:11 and 12. "And this is the record, that God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." So that the vital and all important question for everyone of us becomes not am I cultured or uncouth, but am I alive or dead toward God. Have I received God's risen Son who brings me life from above, the life of God, called in the Bible eternal life, or have I not received Him and am therefore classed by God as among those who have "not life."

    Is an intellectual appreciation of the death of Christ on my behalf all that is necessary to my becoming a Christian? Such is invaluable but not in itself sufficient; there must be a heart response as well.

    A man once wealthy loses all his money, and rather than sacrifice his social position, he agrees to give the hand of his daughter to a rich man whom she despises. At first she refuses point-blank, but when her father shows her the expediency of the marriage, that it is  his only hope of being saved from utter ruin she consents, and goes through the marriage ceremony, and becomes, according to the law of the land, his wife. But is she really his? Surely not!

    You catch the idea, don't you? When a man and woman would be truly one, they must love with such a love as to receive each other into those innermost recesses of their hearts in such a deep, true way that they cannot fully express in words all that they feel.

    We all have the innermost recess of our beings, which is sacred to us, where emotions stir that no one else could possibly understand, and Jesus Christ, God's Son, because of His love for us, claims the right to enter there, He will take no other place in my life. The love He has shown for me entitles Him to that place. Will I withhold it?

   When I think that Christ's love for me was so great that He left His Father's glory and came to earth, taking on the form of humanity that He might suffer and die in my room and stead to save me for time and eternity, my heart softens towards Him.

    If when lying sick and helpless, a human friend had rushed into a burning building to save me, and, wrapping the blankets about me that I might receive no harm, had himself been scarred and burnt about the face and arms so that he lay dying, would not my heart go out to him? God knows it would.

    And now I am face to face with my Saviour. I see Him suffering in the garden of Gethsemane in anticipation of His death on the Cross for me: I see Him in Pilate's Judgment Hall; the soldiers have been striking Him in the face, saying, "Prophesy, who smote Thee?" But now they are crowning His holy brow with a crown of thorns. Bleeding and bruised, they have taken him from judgment to Calvary; they are driving great spikes through His hands and His feet, and, not yet satisfied, having lifted Him up to die between two thieves, they gather around to mock Him as He pours out His life to redeem them, and then I begin to understand what self-sacrificing love really means as I hear Him cry: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do."

    But could we enter sympathetically into the physical sufferings of Christ until tears streamed down our cheeks, and that was all, we should have failed miserably to comprehend the true significance of the Cross.

    Second Cor. 5:21 tells us that "He (God) hath made Him (Christ) to be sin for us, Who knew no sin." Come with me, I pray you, with bowed head and humble heart, and let us, if we may, enter into the soul sufferings of Christ the Son, and of God the Father, as that Holy One, Who loathed sin as we would loathe leprosy, is "made sin for us."

    If the higher the development of the physical organism the greater the capacity for pain, then the higher the development of the moral character, the greater the capacity for soul-suffering.

    Have you ever heard of a venerable old gentleman, justly proud of his honored name - a man who would sooner lose his right hand than use it to do a dishonorable deed? His son and heir goes astray from the paths of virtue, and in a drunken brawl murders someone - and the old man walks no more erect, his head is bowed in shame, and soon his soul-suffering brings his gray hairs in sorrow to the grave.

    If that be possible, and it is possible even for us to feel the disgrace of a greater sin than we are used to - think what must SIN be like in all its awfulness to an absolutely holy God? Now I understand why, in the garden of Gethsemane, Christ turns in loathing from sin and cries out in the agony of His soul: "My Father, it it be possible, let this cup pass from Me: nevertheless, not My will but Thine be done." Yet in spite of that agonized cry from Gethsemane, "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son" to be "made sin" for us. "That whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but  have everlasting life."

    Now do you understand why I said that if I would retain any ideal of manhood, or any nobleness of character, I dare not reject One Who had endured so much for me? My intellect has reasoned it all out; My emotions have been deeply stirred; and now they both appeal to my will for a decision. To be true to my God and myself and my eternal future I had only one course open, and I took it. Today Jesus Christ is my personal Saviour and my Lord.